About

Alexa is a Cumbrian singer, actor, and mischief-maker living in London. From opera to film via cabaret and comedy; her creative versatility, perceptivity, and quick wit mean she is suited to a wide range of performance disciplines.

With a particular fondness and capacity for new writing, Alexa created the role of Dawn in Nico Muhly’s Marnie in 2017, a co-production with English National Opera and The Met.

Previously for ENO she has performed the role of Meretaten in Glass’ Akhnaten, in the Olivier Award-winning production directed by Phelim McDermott, as well as creating Gizmo One in Joanna Lee’s The Way Back Home directed by Katie Mitchell, and a Spirit in Rihm’s Jakob Lenz.

Other recent roles include the World Premiere of Dear Marie Stopes at the 2018 Tête à Tête festival in association with the Wellcome Collection, Gretel Hansel and Gretel and Clorinda Cenerentola for HighTime Opera, Ortlinde Die Walküre, Wellgunde Das Rheingold/Götterdämmerung with Fulham Opera.

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The Daily Telegraph

Alexa’s enjoyment and exploration of new and more contemporary writing extends to the concert platform as well as the opera stage

Alexa made her BBC Proms debut in 2017, as the soloist in the first live performance of the Philip Glass/Ravi Shankar collaboration Passages, with Anoushka Shankar on Sitar and Karen Kamensek conducting.

Her concert work with the Auricle Ensemble has seen her tour Scotland with contemporary chamber works such as Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and Maxwell Davies’s Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot, as well as diverse programmes of cabaret songs, Mahler works, and Polly Peachum in Weill’s The Threepenny Opera.

She is the vocal third of the Scotland-based voice, clarinet and piano chamber trio, Tenacious T’Weed, who were the winners of the RSAMD Governors’ Prize for Chamber Music in 2006 and have continued to perform their varied repertoire in recital throughout Scotland.

Schedule

August 9th 2018, 8pm

Wellcome Museum, London

Alex Mills Dear Marie Stopes

Music: Alex Mills

Words: Jennifer Thorp

Director: Nina Brazier

Gender and sexuality expert: Dr Lesley Hall

Soprano: Alexa Mason

Contralto: Jess Dandy

Countertenor: Feargal Mostyn-Williams

Viola da gamba: Liam Byrne

Cello: Lucy Railton

Dear Marie Stopes

First published in 1918, Marie Stopes’ controversial ‘sex manual’, Married Love, revolutionised the way people understood desire, sexuality and sexual health. In response, Stopes received thousands of emotionally-charged letters from readers asking for more advice and sharing their individual stories, which are now stored in Wellcome Collection’s archives.

A century on, a new chamber opera by composer Alex Mills explores this fascinating snapshot of a society’s sex life using extracts from the letters that have been carefully collated with archivist and gender and sexuality expert, Dr Lesley Hall, and writer and librettist, Jennifer Thorp.